Russian bombers’ helper jailed

Moscow, May 30 (IANS) A man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison by a Moscow court that found him guilty of assisting suicide bombers who had planned a terror attack in the Russian capital in 2010, RIA Novosti reported.

The Moscow City Court sentenced Timur Akubekov to 10 years in a high-security prison, said the RAPSI legal news agency.

Akubekov, born in 1979, will also have to be under supervised release for two years once he serves his term.

No evidence was examined in the trial and no witnesses questioned because Akubekov had signed a pre-trial cooperation agreement with investigators.

Ibragimkhalil Daudov set up a gang in the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan in October 2010 to plot a series of terror attacks in Moscow and Dagestan, including an explosion on Moscow’s Red Square Dec 31, 2010.

Akubekov was instructed to ensure that female suicide bombers Zeinap Suyunova and Daudov’s wife Zavzhat Daudova be brought to Red Square, show them where to blow themselves up and control the attack, investigators said.

Akubekov was then supposed to inform another gang member, Shamil Paizulayev, of the completion of the attacks.

Suyunova was to have detonated a homemade explosive device on her body near people celebrating New Year on Red Square. Daudova was to have waited for law enforcers to arrive and blown herself up near them.

Daudova died while trying to fasten an explosive device on her body when the two women were in a hotel.

Suyunova failed to perpetrate the terror attack as well. She lost the switch from her homemade explosive device, which made it impossible to blow the device up.

Having also lost her mobile phone and without knowing where Red Square was in Moscow, she failed to communicate with the gang members to receive instructions from gang leader Daudov. She decided to escape and took a bus to Kizlyar in Dagestan.

Suyunova was brought to Moscow in January 2011. She was found guilty of banditry, an attempt to perpetrate a terrorist act, and illegal manufacture and possession of explosive devices.

Akubekov was detained in Dagestan capital Makhachkala in the same month.

A court earlier in May sentenced Suyunova to 10 years in a medium-security prison.

Kommersant business daily said Suyunova became involved in terrorism against her will.

She said she made friends with a group of Wahhabis while studying pharmacology in Russia’s southern Stavropol region, left home and married a man who turned out to be a militant.

After her husband was arrested for organising terrorist attacks, Suyunova was taken to Dagestan where she was told that her spouse had died and she had to take revenge for him by blowing herself up in Moscow.